


Nest Building

by Argyle



Category: The Secret Garden
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-09-26
Updated: 2004-09-26
Packaged: 2018-01-09 16:18:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1148088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Argyle/pseuds/Argyle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Their belief in the Magic was an abiding thing.</i> (France, 1915)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nest Building

Dawn comes slowly.

Slender limbs of light stretch out from the horizon, pulled by wisps of gunmetal clouds and the fading frame of the last hour’s star field, pulled by the whispers of men, cracked and weary, and the echo of mortars where there once was only song.

_The robin led them into the garden, allowing his ruddy vest to be both key and beacon, brightly twining their joy to his own voice, lifting with the wind as he built his nest between the gentle quivering of leaves. Colin followed the line of the robin’s motion, hoping that one day, he too would unlock the secrets of flight._

Hunching his shoulders against the damp folds of his greatcoat, Colin stifles a cough with the back of his hand. He struggles to push away the circuit of images that then arise, the trail of emotions to come with the realization of so many years spent with a blanket over his head, blocking his senses from the world. No, those times are gone, lost as spring rain into the darkened soil, in turn giving strength to the sprigs of new life, and he had changed.

He knows the sun as it now falls in fractured spokes across his face just as he once knew it to collect in the garden’s pools of ivy and roses. Frost catches against his lashes and the crease of his brow, bridging the memories of a thousand hours spent sprawled across the path and his current sight, the slate curtain of the sky and endless stretches of ice and mud underfoot.

There is warmth to Colin’s dreams.

_He saw stillness in those days. Music from Dickon’s pipe hung in the air, the delicate, eager notes splayed before them, resting and rising with languid deliberation. They danced beneath a canopy of growth, red and gold, blue and green, and Colin felt that he would live forever, his gaze held to the high boughs. Mary’s dress billowed and became illuminated with her movement, crisp as they fell together into the grass, a spirit joined by three threads of laughter. Colin watched as she shifted her white stockings, bounding above the beds of silver-backed thistle, her feet flitting here and there between the sunspots and the shadows._

_And Dickon had smiled._

Colin raises himself, his elbows pressing roughly against the dirt, breath visible before the haze. With a tug upon the knotted wool at his throat, he raises a hand to his chest, against the form of the locket that hangs beneath his tunic, its thin, tarnished chain tangling with the taut links of his dog tags. Long ago, he memorized the lines of the picture within, the tiny eyes held lightly in dotted sepia, the mouth a bemused bow. Mary.

_As that summer moved into autumn, the winds howled across the moor, calling to the phantoms of earth and sky. He pulled his jacket close to his body, hesitant to take heed of the thunder’s distant din and the acknowledgement of past and future. Dickon remained by his side, his hands warm and firm against Colin’s own, his lips soft._

There is a slow movement beside him, the sound of fingers being rubbed brusquely together in an attempt to stave off the raw bite of the cold, and a low shudder of breath. Like a flower that turns toward the sun, Colin shifts against the frozen ground, gazing to the silhouetted figure beside him.

_Dickon told him of the Magic, that with each passing year, the garden would grow stronger._

Poppies bloom with the curve of Dickon’s smile, crimson coaxed before white by morning’s chill and the tug of the wind, and Colin’s mind is clouded by things addictive, dangerous, and dreamy. Perhaps there is nothing else.

_Spring would come again._

Colin closes his eyes, remembering green.


End file.
